


me and our little vignette

by tenderjock



Series: hazy cosmic jive (it's all worthwhile) [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League (2017), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, superwoman au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22021144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: Clark meets the family. There's pie. It's all, in the end, very good.
Relationships: Batfamily - Relationship, Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Series: hazy cosmic jive (it's all worthwhile) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585039
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	me and our little vignette

**Author's Note:**

> first, s/o to the wonderful Jenny iridescentoracle for being kind enough to beta this fic!!
> 
> this is more of a deleted scene from my superwoman au than anything. i hope you guys enjoy it! fic title from jackie and wilson by hozier.

In the back of the town car, Clark gets the chance to look at Bruce. He’s looking sharp in pressed navy slacks and a cozy sweater that probably costs what Clark makes in a month. She feels a little out of place in the dress she bought at Target and the sturdy boots she inherited from Ma. She shoves her glasses further up her nose, touches the messy bun on top of her head and half-heartedly wonders whether down would have looked better.

Next to her sits the chocolate pecan pie that she brought. She keeps a hand on the edge of the pie plate to keep it from overturning into her lap.

“So,” she says, mostly to break the silence. Bruce raises an eyebrow. Clark smiles, just a little.

“So,” she says again, “I know Dick. Who else is there?”

Bruce rolls his neck out contemplatively. “Well,” he says, “Barbara – it’s technically her apartment. She’s Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, and she and Dick are –  _ together _ .” He says it rather dubiously; Clark hides a smile.

“Then there’s Tim – you don’t know him – and Cassandra. Stephanie. Kate would usually come, but she’s in Italy. Babs said that Duke may be coming, as well. That’s everyone.”

“Do they all – know?” Clark says. Bruce nods, glancing out the window. Snow falls in thick flurries. Alfred, in the driver’s seat, navigates the roads carefully.

“They’re my family,” he says. “They’re all I have.” Clark makes a small, involuntary noise in the back of her throat, and reaches out to clasp Bruce’s hand. She holds it over her heart and smiles again when he looks at her.

“Meeting the Batfam, got it,” Clark says.

“Do  _ not _ call them that,” Bruce says, “Especially where they can hear it.”

“What, do all your protégés lack a sense of humor?”

“No,” Bruce says, “They’ll love it. They’ll never let me forget it.”

Clark laughs, bright and sudden. The soft sound of snowfall sinks into her ears like white static. Alfred slows for a turn and Clark squeezes Bruce’s hand. After a long second, he squeezes back. They spend the next hour in silence; Clark listens to the end of the storm settle around them. Bruce meditates. Alfred keeps up an almost-inaudible running commentary of the other drivers on the road.

Eventually, they pull in front of a blocky gray apartment building. Bruce’s hand briefly convulses in hers, and then he climbs out of the car and gets the door for her. She smooths her skirt down and follows, pie in hand.

They wait for the elevator while Alfred parks the car. Bruce adjusts the collar of his sweater. Clark realizes, in a slow moment of epiphany, that he’s nervous.

She supposes she  _ is _ meeting the boyfriend’s family for the first time. But still – how bad could it be?

The elevator dings open and they clamber in. After a moment, Bruce catches her eye and tilts his head in her direction. He takes a short breath and says: “Don’t be put off if they’re a little – uncouth. I told Babs that everyone should behave themselves, but that’s kind of a relative term with them. They hated Selina, the first time I brought her around.”

“So I’m aiming for ‘better than Selina’?” Clark asks, amused despite herself.

Bruce frowns. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. B, look,” she says. “It’s fine. Everyone likes me.  _ You  _ like me, and you don’t like anyone.”

“I like some people,” Bruce says. “People worth liking.” He doesn’t disagree with her assertion that he likes  _ her _ , though; she figures that’s a compliment in and of itself.

The elevator arrives at the tenth floor, the top floor. They clamber back out. Bruce leads her down the hallway to a door that is festooned with a comically large red and green wreath.

He knocks shave and a haircut on the door and stands out of the way, like a policeman who thinks the resident of the apartment might have a gun. Before she can comment on it, the door swings open.

“Hey, Clark!” Dick says, tugging her immediately into a warm hug. She hugs back, mostly out of instinct. “Babs wants to show you something,” he tells Bruce over her shoulder. Bruce nods and edges past him in the narrow hallway. From the inside, the apartment is small, cramped. Clark allows herself a glimpse of x-ray vision to scope out the kitchen, bedroom, single bathroom, and what appears to be a living-slash-dining room.

Dick takes her coat and directs her to the main room of the apartment, where what seems like the entire population of Gotham has converged. Bruce is in a tense conversation with a young redheaded woman in a wheelchair.

The redhead notices Clark. “Hello!” she says, rolling forward to present a hand. Clark shakes it, feeling her lips twitch into a smile. “You must be Clark.”

“Yes,” Clark says. “And you’re – Barbara?”

“Got it in one,” Barbara says. “Everyone – ” she raises her voice and the room, while not silenced, goes briefly quieter “ – everyone, this is Clark, Bruce’s … plus one.”

“She’s a friend,” Bruce says shortly.

“A  _ friend _ ,” Dick says. On his tongue, the word is lascivious.

“A friend,” Clark agrees, handing the pie to Dick. “It’s nice to meet you all.”

There is a whirlwind of introductions, before Dick ushers them all to the table to grab their plates. Clark follows a black teenager with a halo of blonde curls – Stephanie – into the kitchen, where there is quite frankly a fuckton of food laid out on the counter. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, Brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, and creamed onions; Clark stands back to watch the Batfam descend on the food like a plague of locusts. Dick comes to stand at her shoulder.

Clark surveys the spread that was before her. She points to a yellow mash. “Swedes?”

“Yep,” Dick says, popping the  _ p _ . “Good job. We call them rutabagas, though.”

“It’s very – ” Clark hesitates. “Well. It’s not quite what I was expecting. I had no idea Bruce knew this many people, to be entirely honest.” Dick laughs. “The food looks good,” she adds. “If a little – ”

“Thanksgivingy,” Dick says. “It’s okay to say Thanksgivingy.”

“Okay,” Clark says, “It does have some Thanksgiving vibes. I like Thanksgiving, though.”

“Better move fast,” Dick advises. “It won’t be there all day.” He joins the swarm of hungry bat-lings. Clark watches for a moment longer, then throws herself into the fray to get some Brussel sprouts before they’re all taken.

At the dining room table, there is a brief moment of quiet as everyone digs in. It’s broken when Tim says, mouth full of mashed potatoes, “So, how’d you two meet?”

“Oh!” Clark says, casting a surprised glance at Bruce.

“Master Tim,” Alfred says, a hint of warning in his voice. Tim swallows hard and takes a sip of water.

“Sorry,” he says. Then, again: “How did you guys meet?”

Clark is looking at Bruce, who appears to be absolutely transfixed by the act of smearing cranberry sauce on a roll. It had never occurred to Clark that Bruce would just –  _ not tell _ his family about her, who she was. She stares at his profile, struck somewhere between exasperation and affection.

“Well. We met at a Luthor event, actually,” Clark says. “It was great: we got to talking; we had what was, in retrospect, a  _ truly _ hilarious conversation about vigilante justice; Bruce was super condescending – ”

“I wasn’t condescending,” Bruce interjects. Clark raises her eyebrows.

“Do you prefer patronizing? Borderline misogynistic?”

“Oh, boy,” Barbara says, “Did he call you ‘honey’?”

Clark points at Barbara. “She gets it! Yes, he did, as a matter of fact.”

Barbara picks up a roll from a decorative basket on the table and throws it at Bruce. “You can’t do that, Bruce, it makes you look like an asshole. A bigger asshole then you already are.”

Bruce snatches the roll out of the air and takes a bite. “’M not an asshole,” he says with his mouth full.

There’s a momentary chaos as everyone at the table vehemently and vocally disagrees.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says above the cacophony. Bruce swallows his mouthful.

“Sorry,” he says.

“So, are you from Gotham?” Barbara says, with an inflection that indicates that she is pretty damn sure that Clark  _ isn’t _ from Gotham.

“No,” Clark says, spearing a single green bean with her fork. “I’m from Kansas; I moved to Metropolis a couple of years ago, for work.”

“Right,” Babs says. “Dick said you were a journalist?”

“For the Planet, yeah.” She almost leaves it at that but Barbara tilts her head in a move so reminiscent of Bruce that she finds herself saying, “My wife works there, too.”

There’s a moment of quiet while the entire table digests that. Barbara breaks the silence.

“Oh, great!” she says. Her tone indicates that things are not, in fact, great. “You’re married?”

“Ah,” Clark says, with the vague premonition that she’s just started digging herself a nice, cozy grave: “Yes. My wife – you might have heard of her, Lois Lane? – well, we finally sealed the deal in October. Pass the salt?”

Barbara is giving Bruce a hard, sideways glance that he is steadily ignoring. She isn’t the only one. Alfred is the only person at the table, besides Clark, not staring daggers at Bruce; he hands Clark the salt and pepper shakers and goes back to cutting his slice of turkey breast with serene British aplomb.

“We’re in an open relationship!” Clark blurts out. “I’m not, you know – ” The word ‘cheating’ seems to be beyond her at the moment. She makes a hand gesture that probably conveys nothing.

There’s a collective sigh of relief from the table. “Great!” Barbara says again, but this time like she means it. Clark exhales slowly from her nose and looks at Bruce, who is looking back. He raises an eyebrow and she suddenly finds herself smiling.

“So,” she says. “We met at a Luthor function. Then we met  _ again, _ under very different circumstances. Let’s just say, B wasn’t my biggest fan.”

“In my defense,” Bruce says, “She did total my car.”

Clark splutters indignantly for a full minute before regaining her calm enough to offer a counter argument: “I totaled your car?  _ You _ drove into  _ me _ !”

“You were standing in the middle of the street!”

“It’s called a brake pedal, Bruce.”

“You were  _ waiting _ for me to hit you.”

“Well,” Clark concedes, “That very well may be true.” She adds, a little petulantly: “It was still your fault.” She turns to the table at large to find Bruce’s entire family watching her like a flock of hungry hawks. Clark ducks her head, mushes Swedes around her plate, and then casts a sneaky glance up.

She can  _ see  _ the lightbulb moment happen on Tim’s face, followed a couple of seconds later by Stephanie and Duke. Barbara sits back, smiling like she’s just had something confirmed for her. Dick clears his throat.

“Hey, Clark,” he says. “Since you’re the guest of honor, do you want first crack at the pie?”

“Uh,” she says, with the feeling that she’s being thrown a life preserver for a flood she hadn’t been previously aware of. “Sure.” She follows Dick into the kitchen, empty plate in her hands.

Before the kitchen door can swing closed, Tim exclaims, “You brought Superwoman to Christmas dinner and  _ didn’t tell anyone _ ?!”

Dick snickers. Clark catches his eye and smiles back. “You know,” she says, “It really  _ is _ nice to be here.”

“It’s good to have you,” Dick says. “All jokes aside, Bruce needs more people that he can trust. I’m glad that he got over his – I don’t know, whatever thing he had against you.”

Clark hums, taking the knife that Dick offers her. “It was all just a misunderstanding,” she says. Then: “And I’m glad he got over it, too.”

She carefully cuts a small wedge of pecan pie, then adds some pumpkin and cherry as well. Ma Kent makes the best cherry pie in the world, of course, but Clark’s interested in seeing how this one holds up. They must have used frozen cherries, she thinks to herself, poking at the crust, when she realizes that Dick is talking to her.

“Hmm?”

“How’s your work going?”

“My work-work or my super-work?”

“Either. Both. But I was mostly asking about work-work,” Dick says. “We get enough super-work around here to last us for a lifetime.”

Clark nods in acknowledgement. “Actually – I haven’t told Bruce this yet, I only got the assignment this morning – I’ve been assigned a piece on the Gotham Bat.”

Dick, halfway through squirting whipped cream into his mouth straight from the can, chokes.

“I was wondering whether Bruce would submit to being interviewed,” she adds. Dick, almost recovered from the whipped cream incident, dissolves into a coughing fit.

“Oh, man,” he says. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Shit, you’ve gotta get Bruce in on it; I’ll talk to Alfred about it.”

“Do you frequently go behind Bruce’s back to Alfred?” she asks. She’s not judgmental about it or anything, just genuinely curious. Dick makes a so-so gesture with his fork.

“Sometimes,” he says. “When it’ll work better.” He takes an overlarge bite of pecan and makes a content noise in the back of his throat. “This is  _ so good _ ,” he mumbles, chewing.

“Master Dick,” Alfred says from the other room. Dick swallows.

“Right, sorry.”

Clark, mouth full of pumpkin pie but not wanting to get reprimanded by Alfred, points towards the kitchen door wordlessly. Dick nods and piles up the four dishes – three types of pie and an orange olive oil cake, if Clark’s nose isn’t mistaken – onto his arms like a seasoned waiter. Clark follows, finishing off the last of her pumpkin as she does so.

As with the main course, there’s a brief silence as everyone begins to eat. Clark looks around the table, noticing the little things. Duke’s fading black eye; the way Tim holds his right arm carefully; how, despite her quiet, Cassandra is taking in every detail. They make eye contact across the table. After a moment, Clark looks away.

And Bruce – Bruce is, she realizes, happier than she’s ever seen him before. There’s a lack of tension to his shoulders that has never happened around the League, or even alone in the Batcave.  _ He really loves them _ , she thinks, and while it’s not quite a surprise, she wishes he had mentioned them before.

Well. That’s Bruce, isn’t it?

She steals a bite of olive oil cake from Bruce’s plate. When he looks at her, she feigns innocence, which is a difficult look to pull off with a full mouth.

“You aren’t even done with yours,” Bruce says, using a spoon to take some whipped cream off of her plate. She catches Dick watching them and smiles at him. He smiles back, shaking his head.

“Where did you get this pie?” Stephanie asks. “It’s really good.” She takes a final bite to polish off her slice and dives in for another, fending off Cassandra’s fork as she does so.

“Oh! I made it,” Clark says. She makes some sort of hand gesture, again, feeling rather awkward at being the center of attention,  _ again _ .

“She made the pie,” Tim announces to no one in particular.

“It’s a family recipe.”

“She made the  _ family recipe pie _ .”

“Tim,” Bruce says in warning. It has absolutely no effect.

“So,” Clark says, casting around for any possible topic change: “How long have you lived in Bludhaven?”

There’s a moment of silence while everyone considers the question. Barbara, God bless her, takes the bait.

“We,” she says, gesturing to herself and Dick, “moved here, what was it, two, three years ago?”

“Three years,” Dick says, rather stiffly. He appears to be transfixed by the last bit of sugared pie crust on his plate. Clark glances at Bruce; he’s similarly mesmerized by his dessert. No one says anything for a long moment. Alfred finally breaks the tension by standing and taking her plate.

“Oh, no,” Clark says, rising halfway to her feet. “Let me help – ”

“You’re a guest, Ms. Kent,” Alfred says, and that is that, apparently, because Dick gently pushes her back into her seat and takes the other plates from around the table. Without Dick and Alfred, Clark gets the feeling of having a buffer removed from the conversation. Tim, Stephanie, Duke, and Cassandra all eye her with interest. Barbara is furiously texting on her phone, but she puts it down after a moment.

“I have a question,” she says, brushing a lock of flaming hair from her face.

“Shoot,” Clark says.

“How do you prevent people from recognizing you? You don’t wear a mask.”

“Hmm,” Clark says. “That’s a good question.” Barbara raises her eyebrows and, again, Clark thinks that she looks so much like Bruce that it’s kind of scary.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I honestly didn’t think that I would get so – well-known, I guess. I didn’t think that I would need a mask. So far, nobody’s recognized me, so it’s all gone pretty well, don’t you think?”

“It’s gone pretty well,” Barbara repeats. Then: “Well, I suppose I can’t fault your logic.”

Clark has been around Bruce enough lately to recognize the compliment. She toasts Barbara with her glass and finishes the –  _ really good _ – whiskey sour. Not her first choice for a Thanksgivingy-post-Christmas-dinner, but she had to admit that it went down easy.

Bruce, next to her, sips at his ubiquitous gin and tonic. Tim takes up the next line of questioning.

“Before you were Superwoman,” he says, “You still committed superpowered acts.” She frowns at him, not sure where he’s going with this. Tim elaborates: “There was a case at an oil rig off the coast of Canada – ”

“Ah, yes,” Clark says. “My powers came in at about – fourteen? And I could control them pretty well by sixteen, seventeen. After my dad died – ” she breathes out, still feeling the ache of Pa’s death “ – well, after that I did a lot of traveling. The Americas, mostly. I was a truck driver in the Southern Cone for a while, then hitchhiked my way up to Alaska, did some work on a small fishing boat. Stuff like that.”

“Hitchhiking isn’t the safest way to travel,” Duke says. It’s the first thing he’s said to her all night; Clark thinks that he might be nervous, too. She’ll admit, it’s an intimidating group.

“Well,” she says, with the hint of a smile. “Safety is kind of a funny thing for me. One time, near LA, this trucker picked me up and then started – behaving ungentlemanly, let’s just say. So I popped the door open and just left. We were going seventy, seventy-five on the freeway. The look on his face was  _ priceless _ .”

Cassandra laughs. This surprises Clark as much as it surprises everyone else; the entire table looks at her.

“I like her,” Cassandra says to Bruce, conspiratorially low. Bruce’s mouth twitches.

“Thanks,” he says.

“I’m just glad you found out each other’s identities before banging her,” Stephanie says. Duke makes a noise like he’s been gut-punched. Tim snorts. Barbara casts her a warning look; it does absolutely nothing, as far as Clark can tell.

“Seriously, though,” Steph continues. She looks around the table. “Everyone was thinking it, right?”

“Um,” Clark says. Bruce, next to her, drains his drink with the air of a man about to jump out of a plane.

“She does have a point,” Tim says after a moment. Bruce points at him.

“You make  _ one mistake _ ,” he starts. Barbara cuts him off.

“More like three,” she says. Stephanie hums.

“That time with the Gazette reporter, too, what was her name,” Steph says. Tim nods.

“Vicki Vale,” he says. Barbara shakes her head.

“I was counting Vicki,” she says. “The other times – ”

“You bang people who don’t know your identity?” Clark interrupts what is shaping up to be a lively debate. “That’s kind of – ”

“Duplicitous?” Bruce offers.

“Well,” Clark says, “I was going to say ‘messed up,’ but that works, too.”

“Things happen,” Bruce says. “You know.”

“Do I know, though?” Clark says. She can see Bruce rethinking his approach.

“So I might have had a few indiscretions,” Bruce says loudly in an attempt to drown out the rest of the table’s conversation, which had devolved into identifying which of Bruce’s transgressions qualified as ‘banging while masked’. “What harm did any of it do?”

“There was that one woman that stabbed you,” Stephanie says. Bruce sighs, the sigh of a man who is resigned to his fate.

“I forgot about Talia,” he mutters, rubbing his chin. He throws a sideways look at Clark. “Just ignore everything they say, please,” Bruce says.

“But it’s so interesting!” she says, catching Bruce’s hand and holding it over her heart. Bruce smiles, just the tiniest bit, and Clark thinks that she’s seen him smile more tonight than she has in the past year.

Tim gags. Clark looks up to realize that all the little bat-lings are watching them with sharp, intent gazes. She releases Bruce’s hand, self-consciously.

“Coffee?” Dick says, entering the dining room, damp dish towel in hand. “Show of hands.”

Everyone except Cassandra raises a hand. Tim raises two.

While the coffee brews – and Clark is happy to find that the Grayson-Gordon household uses a regular coffee pot, not one of those Keurigs that Lois loves because  _ they’re so easy, babe _ – the table turns to shop talk. Barbara is questioning Bruce about the movements of someone called the Scarecrow, and Clark is reflecting with Stephanie and Duke over why all supervillains in Gotham are so fucking  _ weird _ .

“I mean,” Clark says, “I’ve got Lex. And aliens. Pretty much, that’s the extent of my villains. But for B – jeez, I don’t even know.”

“Everybody’s got a gimmick,” Duke says. Clark nods. Dick arrives, somehow balancing all of their coffees without spilling any. Clark, who has worked in quite a few diners and knows exactly how hard that is to do, is very impressed.

He shuffles out their coffee orders; Bruce takes the cream and sugar from him and passes it over to Clark. Bruce, of course, takes his coffee black as sin and has never failed an opportunity to mock Clark for the amount of fixings she puts into hers. She ignores his look with the help of long practice and proceeds to dump white sugar into her mug, stirring vigorously.

She surreptitiously checks her watch. It’s almost eleven, which means that Lois will be home by now, probably. Bruce catches her looking and, raising an eyebrow, tilts his head towards the door. She makes the slightest of a so-so hand gesture and he nods, once.

Clark catches Cassandra watching the exchange, and smiles at her. Cassandra glances around; everyone seems fully engrossed in their coffee. After a moment’s hesitation, she smiles back.

After coffee is done, Bruce swings an arm over the back of her chair. “Well,” he says, “We should be off, Alfred.” Clark and Alfred make eye contact over the table and share a moment of despair at Bruce’s nonexistent social skills.

“You’re just trying to get out of doing dishes,” Stephanie accuses. Clark perks up.

“I can do dishes,” she says. Immediately, everyone at the table launches into the myriad reasons that Clark, as a guest and also as Superwoman, shouldn’t have to do dishes in place of Bruce. She shrinks back in her chair, sufficiently cowed.

“We do have to go, though,” Bruce says, casting another glance at her. She nods. That’s that, apparently, because they are unceremoniously shuffled off to collect their coats and bags. Alfred leaves to warm up the car, and after another whirlwind of goodbyes and see-you-laters, Bruce and Clark are left waiting for the elevator to crank up to their floor.

“So,” she says, in response to the question unasked. “That went well.”

Bruce gets caught halfway to a laugh and raises a hand to his mouth to stifle it. “Christ,” he says. “Yes. It went well.” He leans heavily on her shoulder until she gives in and squeezes him into a hug.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into her hair. Clark hums.

“Of course, B,” she says, and: “Any time.”

Bruce hugs her until they reach the bottom floor of the building. The elevator doors jangle open and he releases her gently, tucks a loose lock of hair behind her ear, and motions for her to go first.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm tenderjock as well on tumblr; if you liked this fic, maybe give me a follow. i'm very into various fandoms, but i'm always ready to talk about dc or any of my fics.


End file.
